


Light the Traveler in the Dark

by telm_de_plume



Series: What We Are [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Age Play, Comfort, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Embarrassment, Established Relationship, F/M, Humiliation, Kink Exploration, Light Sadism, Loving Humiliation, Mommy!Zari, Non-Sexual Age Play, Punishment, Spanking, Temper Tantrums, Zari POV, little!john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:42:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29686914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_de_plume/pseuds/telm_de_plume
Summary: Bedtime...a battle of wills.(Background: John and Zari are doing something kind of new and definitely exciting. John's surprisingly insecure about it. Zari's having a great time.)
Relationships: John Constantine/Zari Tarazi
Series: What We Are [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206152
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21





	Light the Traveler in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know, but I had a grand old time writing this and decided to share. Don't like, don't read applies. 
> 
> John and Zari are in a romantic + sexual relationship here, but they don't have sex while age playing. 
> 
> This is nebulously post-season five.
> 
> The title was chosen because I found it funny that it sounds so moody but it's actually just a line from "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."
> 
> Thanks to within_a_dream for the beta read and cheerleading!

It’s bedtime. Definitely a few hours earlier than what’s usual for John, since for him anything approaching a scheduled time to sleep (or, in fact, a schedule) is nonexistent, but once evening came along he started to give hints that he was hoping to go into the headspace they’ve started exploring together, and when he’s like this, he has a bedtime. 

John’s been playing with his eclectic collection of toys and showing Zari endless not-a-real-child-friendly “magic tricks” for a couple of hours now, and he’s so happy that Zari almost doesn’t want to break the spell (ha), but it’s eleven o’ clock, she made a rule, and she’s going to stick with it. 

Besides, she’s pretty sure he decided to get like this now because he hasn’t been sleeping enough. Or at all. And now that he has her, he actually has someone who can put him to bed, if she’s willing. And considering the fact that she was the one who suggested they grab his things and courier over to his apartment when she noticed him looking longingly at the place in his room where he keeps his toys locked up...yeah, she’s willing.

Even though he’s being difficult about it.

“Don’t want to sleep,” John informs Zari yet again, and she holds back a sigh. 

“Why not?” 

“I jus’ don’t,” John mumbles, twisting Apollyon the bear’s neck in his hands so that it faces backwards and then letting it spring back before starting again, like an ill-thought-out Disney Channel version of _The Exorcist_. 

He’s sitting on the floor of the currently magically locked and soundproofed spare room in his apartment, which may or may not become a place where they stay together when they want to do this and have some free time, since his room on the ship isn't exactly spacious, and she was really hoping this would go smoothly, but why would it go smoothly? Literally why would she think that? Things don’t go smoothly with John, no matter what headspace he’s in. She smacked him and put him in time-out the first time they actually did this, and she barely knew what she was doing. (She just knew that she didn’t want him setting things on fire.)

“Well, I say it’s bedtime, and you’re going to listen to me, so let’s get you into PJs,” she tells him, gesturing to the sweatpants and t-shirt she’s laid out on the bed. 

John glares at her, and Zari raises her eyebrows. “Johnny? Now.”

He hugs his teddy bear to his chest and says, “No, not gonna sleep. I don’t wanna.” 

Zari has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling, but she manages it, crosses her own arms, and says, “You’ll feel better if you get some sleep. I know you haven’t been sleeping enough, and it’s not good for you.”

“No!” John says in response, raising his voice. Zari shakes her head. 

“Watch your tone,” she chides, and John snarls at her.

She raises an eyebrow and tilts her head. “Sorry, are you a dog or a person? If you’re not going to use your words, at least don’t bare your teeth at me like you’re going to bite me.” John concedes to that, and goes back to pouting. Zari sighs and crouches down in front of him. “Hey, Johnny? Maybe you can tell me what’s wrong before being a brat.”

“Not a brat!” he protests, cheeks flushing.

“You could’ve fooled me.”

John clutches the teddy bear closer, burying his (glowering) face in its fur. Zari feels herself melt, so it’s a relief that John’s not looking at her, since she’s trying to be strict. She thinks she’s pretty good at it, but also he’s _really cute_. 

“Go ‘way,” John says, and she tries to un-melt herself.

“Johnny, again, why do you not want to go to sleep? Are you scared?”

John’s head shoots up, and he gives her an offended look. “I am _not_ scared! I don’t _get_ scared!”

Zari’s not enough of a jerk to tell him that it’s very obvious that he does, so she sails past the clear lie. “Do you not want to have nightmares? Because I’ll be right here. And you can’t just never go to bed because of bad dreams.”

John rolls his eyes, bristling, and snaps, “Shut up! I just have better things to do!” 

Zari’s actually kind of taken aback at that. “Uh, excuse me? Are you really talking to me like that right now?”

“Yes!” John says in almost a yell, and Zari would genuinely smack him if he weren’t sitting down. 

“Hey! You do not yell at me. I am in charge right now, you follow my rules, and my rules say you have to go to bed. Maybe the fact that you haven’t slept in like three days is why you’re so cranky, huh?”

“Not true!” John says, scrambling upright, still clutching the bear. 

Zari gets to her feet too, and stands her ground. 

Someone save her if bedtime tantrums are gonna be a thing. She gets the feeling that they’re gonna be a thing, and, honestly? Zari gets why he doesn’t want to sleep. Unfortunately, staying awake probably does make him cranky, and, like any human being, he needs sleep. She’s also pretty sure he really _wants_ sleep. Most importantly, she’s made bedtime eleven o’ clock, and if they’re really going to do this, she can’t just let him think that he can misbehave his way into changing her mind about basic rules. 

She’s not a sap, and even if she were a sap she wouldn’t be enough of one to back down about bedtime with someone who’s currently literally acting like a child.

“Johnny. Bed. Now.” John scowls and shakes his head, and Zari gives him an unimpressed look and informs him, “You are going to change into your PJs, preferably before I make you.” 

John scoffs. “You can’t make me do anything,” he says, and it’s true that he’s technically bigger and stronger, but she’s pretty sure she can take him, especially because in this mindset he has a tendency to let her take him, and she’s not exactly intimidated by his tousled hair and rumpled clothes and, right, the fact that he’s currently holding a large, beat-up gray teddy bear like a lifeline. 

Finally, Zari brings out the big guns. “Johnny, do you want to go to bed, or do you want a spanking and then to go to bed?” 

Immediately, John falters. Zari’s never given him a real-deal spanking before, but she’s given him a few smacks, and he’s not a fan. 

“Don’t want either,” John mutters, hugging Apollyon to his chest. “Don’t wanna go to bed. Not tired.”

“I think you are,” Zari says. “Baby, come on. Take a deep breath and come over and change into your pajamas. I’ll be there while you go to sleep. Okay?”

John wilts, but he nods. “You’ll stay?”

“Of course I will,” Zari says, cheering internally when she realizes that she will not, in fact, have to spank him. It’s not that she’d have a problem with that—she’s been doing research, and enjoying it—but she’s impressed with herself for not having to fall back on it the first time she enforces bedtime, though she figures it’s also because John isn’t interested in fighting to that point tonight. 

(There’s an awful part of her that really wants him to get there soon. 

...And she's got high hopes, considering John’s everything.)

When Zari gets back from changing into her nightgown, John’s in pajamas but still sitting on the bed, holding his teddy bear and sulking. “Come on, baby,” she coaxes. “Get under the covers. Sleep’s going to come to you.” 

He slumps, and she says, “I’m gonna go to sleep too, Johnny. It’s really late.” It’s eleven thirty, but that’s neither here nor there. “I know you’re tired. Get under the covers for me?”

John finally gives her a nod at that, and clambers under the covers, giving her an expectant look. She gets in with him, and he curls up around her. 

He wakes up whimpering in the middle of the night, but getting him back to sleep isn’t too hard when he’s still in the little headspace, and they both count it as a win.

______________________________

“Tell me when you get tired of it,” John mutters against Zari’s neck a few nights after their fifth _playtime_ , and Zari, still basking in the afterglow of the pretty phenomenal sex they just had, snorts.

“John, we’ve barely started.”

John chuckles ruefully. “But I’m a bit of a handful, ain’t I?”

“Yeah, that’s not really confined to when you’re...y’know.” 

“You know you can,” John starts, and then he falters. He clears his throat. “If you want, you don’t just have to say you might. If you’re. Interested. Especially if I can’t...sleep.” 

Zari raises her eyebrows. She’s pretty sure she knows what he’s referring to, and yeah, she’s interested. She chuckles. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She presses a kiss to his shoulder and says, voice light and fond, “No offense, but it’s kinda cute that you’re so insecure about this.”

John groans, turning onto his back and throwing his forearm over his eyes. “Don’t call me cute. And I’m not insecure,” he insists. “It’s just bloody weird.” 

“There’s not even sex,” Zari points out, teasing, and John groans again.

“That’s the weirdest part!”

Zari laughs and, with a few large, lazy movements, ends up straddling his waist, leaning down to kiss him hard. He grabs her hips and gives her a crooked grin. “Again?”

“Yeah,” she says, kissing his neck. “We’re planning a little dry spell, aren’t we?” 

John lets out a relieved, embarrassed laugh. “Whatever you say.”

______________________________

Another night, another bedtime tantrum—what is this, fit number four?—but this one’s worse than usual, if there is a usual yet. John has raised his voice, and it’s stayed raised no matter how many times Zari’s told him to watch his tone. She’s pretty sure he’s told her to shut up at least five times.

Finally, John yells, “Shut up and fuck off, I don’t wanna and you can’t make me!” and Zari loses her patience. 

She is not willing to deal with something like this every few nights, and by now she knows that he’s just doubling down so hard on misbehaving because he’s testing her to see if she’ll actually follow through on keeping him in line instead of giving up. He’s in for a surprise.

She’s already threatened a spanking, which usually cows him but didn’t seem to get through tonight—and considering the conversation they had the other day, she doesn’t know if she was expecting it to—and, with a thrill, she decides it’s time to go for it.

“Uh-uh,” she says, “you do not swear at me. Go to the bed right now, you’re going to get a spanking.” 

John snarls at her, too wrapped up in his tantrum to note that he should be very worried right now. “No!”

“ _Yes_. I’m in charge and you know it, and you’re in big trouble.” 

Zari walks over to her vanity to root around for the things she replicated for this express purpose, and studies a sturdy wooden ruler and an unused hairbrush. Ruler tonight, she decides. She grabs it from the drawer and tosses it onto the bed. John, who’s still wrapped up in his drama, doesn’t even notice. 

He does notice when she walks toward him, grabs his shoulders gently, and backs him up until he’s against the side of the bed. She pushes him a little so that he’s sitting, and his childish anger falters. 

Zari sits down next to him and says, “Get over my lap. Right now.”

John finally looks a bit wary, as if he’s started to realize he’s gotten into trouble, and his “no” is less defiant than all the other million times he’s said “no” tonight.

“It’s really up to you how long and hard this spanking is going to be,” Zari says, and John’s face flushes.

“I don’t want a…” he starts, but trails off before he can say it, apparently finding himself too embarrassed about the idea of getting a spanking to say it out loud. 

Of all times for him to grow a sense of propriety, this one, well, makes sense, actually. John’s situation—being in the childish headspace he was so awkward and stubborn about that it took her discovering his teddy bear for him to admit it existed _and_ about to be disciplined by his girlfriend—is embarrassing, and she isn’t sure how John is going to react to a spanking when he’s so vulnerable. She doubts it’s going to be stoic, considering the amount of times she’s seen John cry since they started doing this. (A lot. Like, a lot. It’s super cute, actually, which is a twisted thing to think, but it’s also twisted to think that she likes making him cry, as long as it’s not because she was actually awful, and, well...)

“If you’re going to misbehave like this, you’re going to get punished, Johnny, that’s how it works.” Zari raises her eyebrows at him as John crosses his arms across his chest and glowers. “You’re gonna have to give in at some point. Might as well be now.” 

It’s true that he could just storm off, since Zari’s not strong or well-trained enough to force a guy who’s 5’11 across her lap, but John seems to know Zari’s not playing around and that he has two choices here: safeword, or get over her lap.

She gives him an expectant look, not backing down, and finally he rolls his eyes (ah, look, she’s got a tough guy here) and, unsurprisingly, takes option two, reluctantly lying over her lap.

“Good boy,” Zari praises, pleased that John really does seem willing to do this, and John crosses his arms in front of him and rests his forehead on them. 

“I hate you,” he mutters darkly, and Zari laughs, because it’s very hard to take that seriously when he usually runs after her like a puppy and dates and has sex with her when he’s not pretty much acting like a five-year-old.

“You obviously don’t.” She takes a deep breath, because this is her first time really doing this, and she can’t screw up. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to spank you with my hand and then with the ruler.” 

“The ruler?” John asks, a waver in his voice.

“If you tell me to shut up multiple times and tell me to fuck off, you’re definitely going to get something more than my hand. You don’t get to yell at me and swear at me with zero repercussions. I’m going to remind you that I am the boss of you right now.”

John makes a small, concerned noise, and Zari smiles and then, pleased at the fact that John waited until he was in pajamas to snap, which means she won’t have to deal with belts and buttons, says, “Lift up your hips so I can take down your sweatpants.”

John shakes his head hard, and Zari gives him three smacks over the seat of his pants. He lets out a little yelp, and she says, “I could always spank you over these, over your underwear, and bare if you want.”

John shakes his head again, though more meekly this time, and lifts up his hips, letting Zari pull his pants to his knees. 

She starts spanking without warning, putting a lot of force into the smacks, because she’s strong—she’s been working out—but not so strong that lighter smacks with her hand will really hurt (until his ass is actually sore, she guesses), and John cries out in surprise, though he goes quiet after a couple more smacks. Zari, for her part, gets into the groove, alternating cheeks. She lets her hand travel down to the swell of his ass and gives him several uppercut-style smacks, and she hears him whimper. 

“Starting to feel a little sorry, huh?” Zari asks, pausing for a moment, and John doesn’t respond. “You’ve been throwing a tantrum every time you have to go to sleep, and I am tired of it, and I get the feeling you are too,” she continues, starting up the spanking again, still methodical slaps to each cheek until she deals a few sharp smacks to the place where his ass meets his thighs. John lets out a little whine. 

Zari smacks the same spot twice, and John yelps. “Ow!”

Zari’s pleased. Apparently John’s ridiculous pain tolerance isn’t quite as active when it comes to this. She suspects that the emotions involved amplify it too, especially the humiliation, which, considering John’s pride, may be almost as much a punishment as the spanking itself. 

“It does sting a little, doesn’t it?” she asks, maneuvering John while he’s distracted so she can pull his boxers down. She shakes out her hand. Okay, yeah, implements (“anything is fine except the belt,” John muttered, looking like he wanted to melt into the Waverider) were a great idea. Her hand hurts. 

John reaches back, and she smacks his hand. He gasps and removes it as she gets the boxers to mid-knee. “Stay in position with your arms in front of you and don’t reach back again, or you might get a few extra,” Zari warns.

“Wait,” John says, sounding a little tearful. “I just don’t like going to sleep, I don’t wanna have bad dreams, you were right.”

“I know I was right,” Zari says patiently, picking up the ruler and tapping it against John’s pink ass. “Funny how you never wanted to actually tell me, though.”

“I just...I didn’t...” John starts, and then he goes silent. When he next speaks, he asks, “No ruler, please?” 

Zari chuckles. “It’s interesting how polite you sound now. Too bad it’s only after swearing at me because you didn’t want to use your words.” She deals the first smack with the ruler right to the middle of his ass, and John cries out. 

Zari lets a few more measured smacks fall, and John finally lets out a choked sob. He’s trying to hold back, and Zari should feel bad that she’s not going to let him. 

Zari smacks the same place she did before, making a stripe of red on John’s skin. Once he notices that she’s focusing on specific places and making the sting build up, he wriggles and whimpers out, “Wait, don’t do that, that hurts.” 

“I know, baby,” Zari says sympathetically, giving him a harder smack that makes him yelp. “It hurts because you need to know that being naughty has consequences, and if you’d just talked this out with me, we could’ve avoided all of it. You know I’ll do everything I can to help you.” John lets out an embarrassed sound, half a whimper and half a groan, when Zari calls him naughty, and Zari smirks to herself. She moves the ruler down a little and starts targeting another strip of skin, and his whimpering gets louder. “Some tantrums I’ll just deal with, but you know some of them earn punishments, and sometimes time-out or no TV isn’t enough, and you earn a spanking.”

John whines a bit into the sheets. He doesn’t like the word “spanking,” clearly, or that it’s happening to him as a punishment and he’s surprisingly awful at taking it.

Zari herself can’t help but feel satisfied about it all, about the fact that she can tame John Constantine. That he let himself lie over her lap in the first place and is now submitting to her even though it hurts and he doesn’t like it on a surface level. That she knows he’s going to tell her exactly why he’s being punished even though right now he clearly finds it so embarrassing he’s having trouble even admitting _how_ he’s being punished. 

With that thought, Zari takes the lecture a bit further, making sure he can’t detach from the whole thing. “So why’d you earn a spanking, Johnny?” she asks. 

John whimpers, and Zari puts some more force into her next three smacks. John bucks a little and says, “Ow, ow, wait!”

Zari pauses, tapping the ruler against his ass again, this time right at the sensitive place where ass meets thighs. 

“Johnny,” she sing-songs, “why are you getting spanked?” She gives him an extra hard smack as incentive to speak, and John makes a high-pitched sound. He still doesn’t say anything, though his breaths shudder. Faux-thoughtfully, Zari says, “Hm, I’m not sure if you understand, but these aren’t rhetorical questions, baby. I’m not going to change my mind or give up on your very first spanking. Uh-uh. You’re going to answer my questions and I’m not stopping until you do. So why? Are? You? Getting? This? Spanking?” She punctuates each word of her last sentence with a smack, and John lets out a strangled sob.

“All right,” he says. “All right! It’s ‘cause, ‘cause I told you to shut up and I swore at you,” he mutters tearfully, and Zari smiles. 

“Good job,” she praises. “That’s right. You were _naughty_ and said things you shouldn’t say to me, because you forgot I’m in charge. I’m in control, and you shouldn’t be mean to me just because I’m here and you don’t like my rules.” She smacks him right where he’ll be sitting later, and John lets out a choked sound of surprise. Then, after she hits the same place again and again, he kicks his leg, shoulders shaking.

“But I don’t want a bedtime,” he blurts out, clearly through tears, and Zari brings the ruler down five times, hard and fast.

John squirms and then says, a sob in his voice, “No!” 

“You need a bedtime,” Zari says, changing the pace of the smacks so that they’re hard but steady and slow. The tiny sounds John’s making are getting more distressed by the second. “You need to follow my rules, because they’re there to keep you safe and happy when you’re like this. And you need rest without having a big tantrum about it. You need to accept that you’re going to do what I tell you to do, and I will help you if there’s a problem. I’m not going to go away just because you’re being as much of a brat as you can be. You’re not going to push me away.” 

John’s tears intensify like Zari figured they would, because that’s always something John needs to hear. “I’m not going to leave, Johnny,” she says, and John lets out a sob.

Zari goes lower and deals a few sharp smacks to John’s upper thighs, and John jerks forward.

“No! Not there!” 

Naturally, Zari just makes the next few blows to his upper thighs harder, and John starts to break. 

“Mummy, no!” he says, starting to really cry. “I’m sorry I was mean, I didn’t think you’d...I didn’t…” He trails off with a hitching sob, pressing his face into the covers. “Mummy?” he whimpers, clearly mortified, as though he’s asking himself what the hell he was thinking when he said that. 

Zari, for her part, feels a sharp, heady thrill at the word. Considering John’s baggage, she’d held her tongue on suggesting he call her that, but she’s more than happy that it seems like he actually wants to. 

Heat floods Zari’s body, but she keeps focusing on John and the spanking, now smacking steadily up and down his ass and upper thighs, having let up a bit so that he’ll be able to pay attention to her. “You didn’t think I’d actually do this?” she guesses. “You thought I’d just leave you? Nope. I was serious. When you act like a brat, you’ll get punished like a brat.” 

John sobs, kicking and wriggling, and Zari decides that his kicking might get to be too much, so while he’s preoccupied with the feeling of the ruler against his upper thighs, she maneuvers him so that she can put him in a leg-lock.

When he realizes what she’s doing and that it’s going to be much harder to get the relief of wriggling or kicking or even trying to avoid the blows, he says, frantically, “No! I won’t be a brat when I go to bed!”

“That’s good, Johnny,” Zari says, pleased that John was willing to tell her that. “But I just have to make sure you’re going to remember this the next time you don’t like one of my rules. You have to remember to not be mean to me when I’m trying to help, and that I’m in charge.” 

“I’ll remember,” John whimpers, breaths hitching. “I will.” 

“And I need you to remember what happens when you’re really naughty.” She likes that word, even though at first it felt a little strange in her mouth. It sounds kind of British, and, even better, John’s humiliated whine confirms that he finds it mortifying, though it doesn’t last long as he notices Zari tapping the ruler against his ass.

“Please no, M—please no, I’ll remember,” John begs, and Zari smacks him again, noting that he was definitely about to call her “Mummy” and hoping to show him that she’s eager to hear it. He jumps a little, but it’s much harder to kick and squirm with Zari’s leg hooked around his knees, and the position is even better for her to reach the more sensitive places that’ll really drive the point home. 

Zari takes a deep breath, braces herself for tears, and lets loose a long series of spanks, hard and fast, covering John’s entire backside, and that’s when John really breaks, wriggling without much success and clutching at the covers, crying loudly. “Stop! No more, no more, I’ll have bedtime and I won’t swear at you and I’ll listen and I’ll use my words instead of just telling you to shut up!” 

Zari lightens the blows until they’re barely love taps, and says, “Good, but I have one last thing.”

John’s sobs intensify and he begs, “No, Mu—no, no more things.”

The words and his reaction make affection swell in Zari’s chest, and she coos a little, pausing to pet John’s hair until he’s not crying quite as hard. “I know it hurts, baby, I know it’s not fun, but you’re doing a good job. I just need to make sure you understand what happens when you’re really naughty.” And that she doesn’t mind that he wants to call her Mummy.

She smacks his ass a few more times, and John slams his hands against the covers in protest. “I understand!”

“Okay, then tell me, Johnny. Is being a brat going to work to make me go away so you can do whatever you want?” 

“No,” John responds.

“No what?” Zari asks, and John pauses, shaking. 

“No please?” he asks in a small voice, and Zari laughs. Leave it to John Constantine to let something he wants go over his head. 

“Uh-uh, I want you to say something else. Call me something else, Johnny, you know you want to and I’m happy to be your mommy.”

John heaves out a sob and whimpers, and Zari smacks him sharply. “So. Is being a brat going to work to make me go away so you can do whatever you want?”

John takes a shaky breath and obediently says, “No, Mummy.”

Zari hums. “Good boy. Now tell Mommy what’s going to happen instead.”

John stays silent, and Zari smacks his thighs a few times until he hastily says, “I’ll get, I’ll get...I’ll get punished.” She smacks him again, and he lets out a high-pitched sob. “I’ll get punished, Mummy.” 

“Mhm. And what kind of punishment will you get if you behave like this? If you’re really naughty?”

John whimpers, and Zari marvels at the fact that for a guy who regularly cuts himself as part of his job, his tolerance for getting spanked is really very low. (And now that she’s actually done this, she has to admit it to herself: there’s a terrible part of her that loves that. A part that loves this control, loves being able to make John cry and obey like this. A part of her that thinks that right now, he’s absolutely _adorable_ , totally submitting to her.) 

Zari deals five very hard smacks right above John’s upper thighs, and he howls into the covers.

“Johnny, when you’re a brat like this, how will you get punished?” 

“I’ll get a spanking, Mummy,” John sobs, finally. 

“That’s right,” Zari says. “You’ll get spanked like this.” At that, she smacks him more times than she bothers to count, one blow after the other with no time to process them.

John howls and sobs into the sheets, and he says, through messy tears, “Mummy, no more! I understand! I’m sorry I was such a brat! I’m sorry I was _naughty_!”

That’s when Zari throws the ruler aside and lets John out of the leg-lock. “Good boy,” she praises. “Good boy, it’s over now.”

John re-adjusts himself so that he’s lying more firmly over Zari’s lap, and spends a solid minute continuing to cry while Zari rubs his back. After a bit, he pulls his pants and underwear up, and she lets him. He scrambles off of her lap to sit on his heels and reaches out to her. Zari gives him a short hug, rubbing the back of his head, but then reluctantly detaches herself and stands up. 

John gives her a sad, confused look. His eyes are streaming tears and he’s still taking hitching breaths, and Zari feels like a grade-A jerk, but she thinks this will help drive her point home. As much as she enjoyed spanking, she really would rather avoid endless bedtime tantrums, and she knows John wants her to be firm.

Zari’s in charge, and he’ll do what she says. 

“Johnny,” she says gently, “you’re going to go to the corner now, okay?”

John’s face crumples, and he starts crying in earnest again. Not as hard as before, but enough that Zari wishes for a fleeting moment that she just hadn’t said anything. She did, though, and she’s not taking it back without a safeword.

She leans down and puts her hands on John’s shoulders so that they’re at eye level, and says, “It’s okay, baby. It’ll only be a few minutes. I just need you to calm down and think about your punishment, no distractions.”

John whines wordlessly, but lets Zari lead him to the corner after she hands him Apollyon, who he clutches to his chest.

He still hesitates when he sees Zari drag the chair from the inexplicable vanity at the far end of the room—sans the pillow on the seat—over to the corner. She looks at him expectantly, and he lets out a sob and scrubs at his face with his arm, giving her a pleading look. His cheeks flush and he ducks his head when she says, “Be a good boy for Mommy and sit in the time-out chair.” 

She knows that sitting on the hard surface of what’s now apparently the time-out chair will put more pressure on his sore ass over kneeling or even sitting cross-legged on the floor, but that’s the point. She knows he’ll be able to dismiss the pain very soon, and wants him to think of it while it’s fresh. She reaches down and pats his backside a few times, a move that’s both comforting and threatening, and says, “Sit.” 

John does, gingerly, and wriggles and lets out a choked whimper when he settles in. She hugs him from behind as he cries and then sniffles into Apollyon’s fur, and it’s not great time-out etiquette to stay with him for the duration, but by the time she gets herself to detach from him, her phone’s alarm is already going off, and she’s so not mean enough to give him more time alone just because she’s a sucker. 

John has calmed down over the course of the time-out like Zari hoped he would, breaths evening out and tears abating, but he still perks up when he hears the alarm, turning to Zari. “Done?” he asks, and Zari smooths his hair back.

“Done,” she agrees, and he shoots out of the chair and goes over to the bed, clambering onto it and getting on his knees. He holds his arms out insistently, and Zari laughs and goes to hug him. 

He cuddles against her, maneuvering himself so that he’s curled up with his head on her lap, one of his hands smoothing out the hem of her nightgown over and over again. 

He sniffles sullenly, and she runs her fingers through his hair and coos. “Aw, Johnny, you did so good. You’re such a good boy, you took your punishment so well.” 

“Yeah?” John asks, shy hope in his voice, and Zari leans down to kiss his temple.

“Of course, baby.” 

There’s silence, but then John, whose face is still pressed against Zari’s thigh firmly enough that she feels the words more than hears them, whispers, “I love you, Mummy.”

To her embarrassment, Zari finds herself blinking back tears, and she swallows heavily before she says, “I love you too.” She feels John smile sleepily against her in response, and they stay cuddled up together for a quiet, peaceful moment before Zari clears her throat and says, “I’m guessing you’re all ready to go to bed now, huh?”

John nods, and she gets the feeling he’ll be able to sleep deeply tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> I might make a series out of this if there's any interest, maybe expanding on before the events of this fic and after them. (Ngl, I might also do that if there isn't any interest.) Anyway, thank you for reading!


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